The long-running Pathfinder tabletop role-playing game series has been a mainstay alongside Dungeons and Dragons, and it's been steadily making bigger strides into other mediums. Recently, the Pathfinder CRPG series from Owlcat Games has been all about emulating the table-top experience with its dense, tactical role-playing that evokes classics like Planescape Torment and Baldur's Gate, but the series is looking to switch things up with a new game from developer BKOM Studios, which brings the series to the realm of a hack-and-slash action-RPG.
During GDC 2025, we got an opportunity to see an early look at Pathfinder: Abomination Vaults, focusing on a party of four adventurers engaging in a dive into an enigmatic mega-dungeon filled with monsters and some valuable loot. Speaking with game director Steve Wark, he broke down their plans for making a co-op-driven hack-and-slash adventure set in the Pathfinder universe.
"Bringing Pathfinder to an action-RPG has been the fun part of making this game, there's so many different rules to pull from across the different rulebooks and character sheets," said game director Steve Wark. "There's so much inspiration to find when bringing the different character abilities to life in a game, and we're always looking for ways to get players to feel like they're playing a great action RPG. We're looking at ways to make squad play satisfying, but also add in that Pathfinder feel […], and we found that the 'secret sauce' was customization and letting players feel that growth for their characters."
As an adaptation of the Pathfinder table-top adventure path of the same name, Abomination Vaults focuses on the trials of an adventuring party exploring an infamous mega-dungeon known as Gauntlight Keep, which is ruled by the notorious sorceress Belcorra Haruvex. Guiding a party made up of Pathfinder legacy characters such as Amiri the barbarian, Ezren the wizard, Harsk the ranger, and Kyra the cleric, the crew will coordinate their tactics and special abilities to clear through the different biomes of the mega-dungeon, all while making it back to the safety of the village.
Following the BKOM's crowdfunding success on Kickstarter, the developers saw the enthusiasm from fans as a reassurance that this new type of Pathfinder game was something the community was into. However, as an adaptation of the existing brand of tabletop RPGs with a dedicated ruleset and lore, and bringing that into a new gameplay format, the developers have collaborated closely with the creative team at Paizo to ensure some consistency with the source.
"We have a great relationship with Paizo, and they're very open to our plans for the game," said the game director. "When it comes to working on licensed properties, which I've worked on many in my career, the first rule is 'do no harm,' don't explode the moon if they don't want the moon exploded, and so we keep to the core beats of the iconic characters of table-top games, and the team at Paizo have used the iconics from the source material to illustrate things in a certain for people to build off of inexperience with the table-top games. So for our take on Abomination Vaults, we are making the adventure our own thing and using the iconics of Pathfinder as a gateway."
The developers saw the Pathfinder: Abomination Vaults adventure book as the ideal setting for its take-on-action RPG because of its set-up as an epic dungeon crawl – which can be played solo or in a squad of 4 players. During our preview, we got to see the general flow of the game, which felt inspired by classic dungeon-crawling action-RPGs like Gauntlet or, surprisingly, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. There's a rich emphasis on the action elements of cutting down foes and combining your squad's abilities to tear through each floor of the dungeon.
As with any RPG, the real pull is seeing growth happen, and Pathfinder: Abomination Vaults focuses on character gear and leveling up your skills in ways that suit your playstyle. When playing solo, you'll be able to outfit the entire party of traditional adventurers as you see fit – and that includes altering their individual AI tactics. According to the game director, the tactical coordination and party synergy found from the table-top games are still very much in play for the top-down action of BKOM's game, and so far, Abomination Vault's core gameplay offers up some cool action beats that highlight the importance of a well-connected party.
Given this short preview, it's certainly new ground for Pathfinder, one that will take some time to see the benefits of. However, I still found it to be an action RPG that leveraged the Pathfinder universe's dense lore and scale from a new perspective, showing that classic-style hack-and-slash games are still very satisfying in their own right. To see Pathfinder venture out into a new genre that's a bit more approachable is intriguing, and it's an experiment that I hope will pay off once the full game sees release.
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